This is the finest of several versions of this composition painted by the Milanese artist and may have been painted for a noble patron in France, where Solario worked from about 1507–9. Carried out with incredible attention to detail, the artist achieved a striking effect by contrasting Salome’s idealized beauty and jewels with the horrific view of the Baptist’s head held by the cropped arm of the executioner. The descriptive naturalism of reflections and surface textures is indebted to both Leonardo, who worked for decades in Milan, and Netherlandish painting.

Wilhelm Bode. Die grossherzogliche Gemälde-Galerie zu Oldenburg. Vienna, 1888, pp. 13–14, ill. (engraving), as "Herodias"; dates it between 1503 and 1507; states that it was acquired from Bonnemaison in Paris in 1808 and that it supposedly came from Malmaison; notes the popularity of the composition.

Bernard Berenson inThe Michael Friedsam Collection. [completed 1928], pp. 87–88, attributes both this picture and the Northumberland version to Solario and dates them towards the end of the artist's time in France (1507–9); believes that the composition is based on a work by Leonardo.

André de Hevesy. "Les élèves de Léonard de Vinci: Andrea Solario." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 4 (1930), p. 181, calls it a Flemish copy and identifies the version in the Northumberland collection as the original by Solario.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 542, lists it as by Solario.

Bryson Burroughs and Harry B. Wehle. "The Michael Friedsam Collection: Paintings." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27, section 2 (November 1932), p. 38, no. 64, believe that the various versions of the subject are based on a lost drawing or painting by Leonardo.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Italian School. New York, 1986, pp. 60–61, pl. 30, state that the Northumberland version may also be autograph, but that the quality of the MMA work is superior and that it is certainly the prototype; date it about 1510–14, after Solario's return from France to Milan; note the presence of pentimenti.

Victoria Spring Reed. "Piety and Virtue: Images of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance." PhD diss., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., 2002, pp. 160–61, 163, 579, no. 466, fig. 103.

A second signed version of the composition was formerly in the collection of the Dukes of Northumberland, Sion House (private collection, Switzerland, in 1987). Another version was formerly in the Von Nemes collection, Budapest, and was most recently sold at Sotheby's, New York, January 15, 1993, no. 153, as Studio of Andrea Solario. A variant was formerly in the Gualino collection, Turin, and is now in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.

The principal version of a related composition by Solario is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

There are versions of a similar composition by Bernardino Luini in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Borromeo collection, Isola Bella.